Techmeme
December 22, 2018, 4:00 PM

Top News

Slack:
Slack apologizes, says it has restored access to most of the accounts it has mistakenly blocked while trying to comply with US trade sanctions  —  Two days ago, we updated our system for applying location information to comply with U.S. trade embargoes and economic sanctions regulations.
Ryan Mac / BuzzFeed News:
A timeline of Facebook's scandals in 2018 lists 31 entries, showing the company faced a major problem, on average, every 12 days this year  —  Mark Zuckerberg began the year promising that he would fix Facebook.  He didn't, and 2018 has only presented more problems.
Will Oremus / Slate:
Facebook has forfeited trust to the point that people see nefarious motives in any misstep, as some overblown reactions to Spotify and Netflix integrations show  —  Facebook may or may not have lost its handle on our data.  But it has definitely lost its handle on the public narrative—and the benefit of the doubt.
KNSD-TV:
The San Diego Unified School District says a phishing attack exposed personal info of 500K+ students and staff, including full names, addresses, SSNs, and more  —  Student records from 2008 up to the present are impacted, district officials told NBC 7  —  500K Student Records Compromised in SDUSD Data Breach
Washington Post:
Facebook suspends five accounts, including one belonging to the head of research firm New Knowledge, for spreading disinformation during Alabama Senate race  —  Facebook has suspended Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of a top social-media research firm, after reports that he and others engaged …
Jeffrey Dastin / Reuters:
Sources describe how Amazon's efforts to make Alexa a better communicator through its Alexa Prize competition led to a hack and chats about sex and murder  —  SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Millions of users of Amazon's Echo speakers have grown accustomed to the soothing strains of Alexa …
Nick Statt / The Verge:
Epic Games is facing lawsuits over Fortnite dance emotes, real-life dance moves used in the game, raising questions about whether dance moves are copyrightable  —  Epic Games' Fortnite is the biggest game on the planet right now, but one of its biggest sources of revenue — the ubiquitous dance …
Jeff Beck / Android Police:
Huawei and UnionPay's mobile payments service Huawei Pay, available only in China, begins international expansion starting with a launch in Russia in early 2019  —  UnionPay cardholders that bank with Gazprombank or the Russian Agricultural Bank and that use a Huawei device now have a new mobile payment option - Huawei Pay.

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Google:
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UiPath:
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Zack Whittaker / TechCrunch: